Friday, March 28, 2014

Charlotte Dawson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, L’Wren Scott:
three dynamic, talented, apparently well-loved people, dead in the prime of
life, and all in the space of a few weeks.

Two, Dawson and Scott, took their own lives. Hoffman didn’t;
he died with a heroin needle stuck in his arm. But he must have known that
death was a likely consequence of his drug habit, and he took the risk anyway.
So in a sense it was self-inflicted, even if he didn’t intend to die.

It’s hard to imagine the level of despair that takes some
people to a dark place where even the knowledge that others love and care for
them is no longer reason enough for them to go on living.

Dawson and Scott must have reached that point. Hoffman,
perhaps not. But his lifestyle was self-destructive, and being a highly
intelligent man (as he must have been, to be such an outstanding actor), he
must have realised it.

We can only surmise that his will to live wasn’t as powerful
as his addiction. The end result was the same.

All three lived their lives in the public eye, to a greater
or less extent, so it’s our natural inclination to look for possible clues to what
might have made them so unhappy that they saw no point in living.

Here we get into uncertain territory, because even those
closest to them clearly didn’t sense what was going on inside their heads. But
we can speculate on the basis of what we know.

Dawson had money troubles and wondered how she was going to
pay the rent on her exclusive apartment. Scott, too, was reportedly in
financial trouble: her fashion business was deeply in debt and according to
some reports, she was too proud to accept her boyfriend Mick Jagger’s offer to
bail her out.

Dawson and Scott had at least two other things in common.
Both were adopted. As far as we know they had happy, secure childhoods and were
close to their adoptive families. But is it possible that for some adoptees,
there’s a void that can never quite be filled, even though they have been
brought up in a loving and nurturing environment?

I don’t know the answer to that, but it seems a reasonable
question to ask.

Dawson and Scott were also childless. As a male I’m
venturing onto dangerous ground here, but I read a thoughtful article in the New Zealand Herald by the writer Charlotte
Grimshaw, who had known Dawson in her youth.

Grimshaw wrote, essentially, that having children can save
women from feeling they must stay eternally beautiful and youthful.

“The addition of a dependant,” she wrote, “brings the urgent
need for self-preservation. It’s what all parents know: that children not only
enrich life beyond anything you’ll ever experience, they save you too. You can
no longer party hard. If you do, the unit will begin to fall apart.

“Sometimes having babies makes women want to kill
themselves, but once you’ve got them and survived (and sorted out the
post-natal depression), the kids can be the best anchor to life you can have.”

We know that Dawson wanted to have children. In her 2012
autobiography she wrote with painful honesty about having an abortion to humour
her then-husband, the ratbag Australian swimmer Scott Miller, for whom a baby
would have been a distraction from his preparation for the Sydney Olympic
Games. Dawson described it as a horrible, sad time.

Reading of her grief over that abortion, I was reminded of an
Otago University study published in 2006 which found that 42 per cent of women
who had had an abortion subsequently experienced major depression and even
suicidal behaviour. This was nearly double the rate of those who had never been
pregnant and 35 per cent higher than those who had chosen to continue a
pregnancy.

Needless to say, the finding was controversial – so much so
that several academic journals refused to publish it.

Dawson never got pregnant again, as far as we know. Grimshaw
wrote of her: “Charlotte Dawson stayed eternally beautiful and youthful; it was
her blessing and possibly her misfortune to remain untouched by domestic
drudgery.” That phrase “and possibly her misfortune” is the telling one.

I wouldn’t argue for a moment that all women need children
to make their lives complete. Many women are happy and fulfilled without them.
But in the light of what we know about Dawson, it’s possible her childlessness
weighed heavily on her. In the end she was left with only her beauty and
vivacious personality – and in a shallow celebrity world in which appearances
count for everything, its currency was diminishing as she aged.

It seems L’Wren Scott wanted kids too. She once told her
adoptive sister, a Mormon mother of seven, that she envied her for her family
and quiet domestic life. But it seems Jagger either didn’t want, or couldn’t
have, more children.

Granted, it’s sheer conjecture on my part to suggest these
may have been factors. Even the closest friends of people who kill themselves
often fail to see it coming and profess to have no idea why they did it.

But you have to wonder, too, about the demands of the
celebrity lifestyle. Models, actors and TV celebrities inhabit a vacuous world
of air kisses, superficiality and insincerity. The fashionably chic first name
Scott adopted (she was christened Luann) seems symptomatic of its preoccupation
with appearances.

All that unremitting shallowness, and the pressure to live
up to an image, must take its toll. For Dawson, this was doubtless exacerbated
by her apparent inability to disengage from the viciousness of online social
media, even as Internet trolls were doing their best to destroy her.

Her craving for attention evidently outweighed the damage
she must have realised her exposure on social media forums was doing to her –
just as Hoffman’s need for drugs was greater than his instinct for
self-preservation.

At the end of it all, we’re left to consider one of the
great paradoxes of the human condition.

A powerful urge to live keeps some people going even when
their lives seem utterly hopeless. Others kill themselves when they seem to
have so much to live for.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

There was a telling line in a Dominion Post article this week about Victoria University English professor
and poet Harry Ricketts. He told reporter Diana Dekker that he had left England
for New Zealand in 1981 when Margaret Thatcher was in power. He didn’t want his
children growing up there.

It’s funny how this obsession with Thatcher is still
fashionable in certain circles 30 years down the track. It’s regularly trotted
out by Brits of a certain age as proof of their socialist credentials.

I’m no admirer of Thatcher, but the inconvenient truth is
that Britain was on its knees when she came to power after years of weak,
ineffectual Labour government. Its economy was moribund, its people were
demoralised and its industries were in the grip of thuggish trade unions.
Thatcher rescued the country from irrelevancy and gave the British a reason to
be confident again.

Nonetheless, an enduring hate industry – films, books,
television dramas, journalism – sprang up, based on the premise that she was a
ruthless oppressor of the working class and an agent of greedy, heartless capitalists.

If you ask me, by far the worst consequence of Thatcherism is
that it encouraged droves of sad-arsed, disaffected lefties to flee Britain and
take refuge in countries like New Zealand. Many ended up in academia, where
they were of course welcomed with open arms. And decades later, they’re still
bleeding (or bleating - take your pick).

The Dom Post
article included a poem from Ricketts’ latest collection which includes the
couplet: “Wellington is a city that’s
dying,” says the man with cold snapper eyes – an obvious reference to John
Key. We can assume from this that he’s probably no more a fan of Key than he
was of Thatcher.

Ricketts of course is entitled to think Thatcherism destroyed
Britain – even if it means remaining in denial of all the evidence to the
contrary – and that Key is as cold-blooded as a fish. But it’s all so drearily
predictable. The needle has been stuck in
the same groove for the past 30 years, just as it is with New Zealand lefties
who still rail impotently about Rogernomics.

The encouraging thing is that no one is listening, beyond
the narrow, incestuous circle of inner-suburban lefties who attend poetry
readings and buy Landfall and Sport. They’re talking to themselves while
the world moves on around them.

WE’RE generally an easy-going
lot, we New Zealanders. Problem is, I can’t decide whether that’s good or bad.

I recently attempted to catch
a Saturday morning train from Masterton to Wellington. It didn’t turn up. The
word among the 30 or so people waiting at the station was that the train driver
had called in sick.

Eventually a bus came, more
than an hour after the train had been scheduled to leave.

There was a cricket test and a
music festival on in Wellington that day, so a lot of people were heading into
the city. By the time the bus had stopped at all three Masterton stations, passengers
were standing in the aisle.

What struck me was the
good-natured resignation of my fellow travellers. Doubtless arrangements had
been mucked up and inconvenience caused, but it was accepted in good humour.

I didn’t know whether to be
proud or exasperated. On the one hand some might think it charming that we’re
so laidback. On the other, I couldn’t help thinking there were parallels with godforsaken
Third World countries like Haiti or Tanzania, where citizens are so inured to
institutional incompetence – for instance, failing to ensure backup for a sick
train driver – that they consider it futile to protest.

I experience similar feelings
when Air New Zealand flights are delayed, which seems to be most of the time. I
often seem to be the only passenger seething with frustration, not just at the
inconvenience but the apparent indifference of the airline’s ground staff (who,
incidentally, could learn a thing or two about customer relations from the
Tranz Metro employee who accompanied our bus to Wellington).

On a much graver level, I marvel
at our complacent reaction when politicians and unaccountable bureaucrats
launch outrageous assaults on our rights.

In Auckland right now, Len
Brown’s council is considering a draft plan that would force thousands of
property owners to seek something called a “cultural impact assessment” from
local iwi before they can undertake work such as earthworks or vegetation
removal.

Private property rights have
long been a cornerstone of our legal and economic system, yet here they are
being usurped by newly discovered pseudo-rights arising from ill-defined (but
politically voguish) notions of cultural sanctity.

It’s easy to see where things
might lead if, as proposed, 19 iwi are given power to determine whether
property owners can proceed with even modest development proposals. I can
imagine koha being paid to clear away obstacles.

But are the people of
Auckland marching in their thousands on the Town Hall? No. Probably too busy
polishing their BMWs.

* * *

I WONDER whether Judith
Collins ever learned the biblical adage that pride comes before a fall.

You can get away with being
supremely cocky as long as events are running in your favour, but when you
eventually get your comeuppance you’re likely to fall further and land harder.

Ms Collins needlessly made
things more painful for herself by trying to brazen her way out of the Oravida controversy,
thinking her customary imperiousness would get her through. After all, it’s
worked for her in the past.

But that only made it all the
more humiliating when she finally had to acknowledge she was wrong. Her fall
from grace was all the more pronounced because it was from such a lofty height.

There are some lessons here.
The first is that no politician is bulletproof – not even one who revels in the
sobriquet of “Crusher”.

The second is that the media
will take even more exquisite pleasure than usual in bringing down a politician
who is perceived as arrogant and haughty.

It’s not too late for Ms
Collins to catch up on her bible studies. She’ll find the relevant verse at
Proverbs 16:18.

* * *

SO MORTGAGE holders face a
slight upward adjustment in their interest rates. Pass the tissues while I sob
in sympathy.

You’d never guess, from all the
fuss over the Reserve Bank’s raising of the official cash rate, that mortgage
rates will still be low by historical standards. In the 1980s they were running
at more than 20 per cent.

And what’s overlooked is that far
more people will benefit than will be penalised. That’s because far more New
Zealanders are savers than borrowers – by a ratio of five to one, according to
the ANZ bank.

These borrowers have suffered
in silence since interest rates crashed when the global economy tanked in 2008.
In contrast, people with mortgages have never had it so good.

All that’s happening now is a
very modest and long overdue levelling of the playing field in favour of savers
and investors.

Why is this positive news so
conspicuously ignored? It can only be because most of the journalists reporting
on interest rates have mortgages.

Friday, March 14, 2014

SURVEYS consistently show that New Zealand
is one of the easiest countries in the world in which to do business. But I
wonder if the researchers take into account the difficulties of sacking
unsatisfactory employees, and the way the dice appear loaded against companies
accused of wrongful dismissal.

Published reports suggest that any employer
taken to the Employment Relations Authority by a disaffected ex-employee is on
a hiding to nothing. No matter how outrageously the sacked worker has behaved,
he or she is usually held to have been wronged because of some perceived procedural
failure – often minor – by the employer.

The focus always seems to be on the process
rather than the substantive issue that led to the sacking. This leads to some
seriously wonky and unfair outcomes.

The ERA is so endlessly inventive in its
efforts to identify procedural flaws that employers must now fear that it
doesn’t matter how carefully they navigate the minefield laid for them. The authority
will come up with some hitherto unidentified requirement that renders the
dismissal unjustified, even if it means overlooking the reason for the sacking.

The obvious lesson is that it’s easier for
an employer to put up with a lazy, dishonest or unreliable worker than to risk
the humiliation of losing an employment case and being landed with an inflated
penalty.

The prospect of an employer winning a case
before the Human Rights Review Tribunal is equally bleak, judging by the
$27,000 penalty recently imposed on meat processing company Affco.

The employee in question wasn’t prepared to
work on Saturdays – his Sabbath – because of his religious beliefs, but the
tribunal’s decision indicates he didn’t make this known when the company
employed him.

Even when given the opportunity to state
his religious objections to Saturday work, he didn’t. On the contrary, he said
he was willing to work overtime, which the company not unreasonably assumed
would include Saturdays.

When the company found out his religion
forbade him to work on Saturdays, he was told to go. Had he declared his
unavailability on Saturdays, Affco said, he would not have been employed in the
first place.

Despite this, the tribunal found that the
man was the victim of religious discrimination. Affco was held to be at fault
for not explaining that he might be called on to do Saturday work.

Is it reasonable, I wonder, to expect a
company with 3000 employees of multiple religions, and operating in an industry
where there is intense pressure to process livestock at peak periods, to adapt its
roster to suit the religious beliefs of an individual employee? I suspect most
people would say no.

The company told the tribunal that,
commercially, it was not possible to accommodate someone unable to work on
Saturday. Clearly, this cut no ice.

Reading the evidence, it’s clear some
disputed details could have been interpreted either in favour of the company or
the employee.The tribunal gives the
impression that it was over-eager to opt for the latter.

It forgave the plaintiff for not revealing
that he wouldn’t work on Saturday, but it didn’t excuse the company for not
making it clear he might be required to (although Affco disputed failing to do that).

The plaintiff was “humble, modest and
diffident”. On the other hand, the key witness for the company, the production
manager who did the hiring, was “dogmatic”, “inflexible” and possessed of
“tunnel vision”.

There was implied criticism of the
production manager for not being aware of the company’s obligations under the
Human Rights Act. Presumably, then, any manager placed in a hiring and firing
position should be required to have a law degree, or at least a working
knowledge of the HRA, the Employment Relations Act and all the other
miscellaneous statutes that might jump up and bite a company in the bum if a
disaffected ex-employee decides to take a personal grievance case.

But the tribunal had that covered. It
ordered that to “assist” Affco – note the patronising language – the company
must implement a training programme focused on its duties under the Human
Rights Act.

Memo to the Human Rights Review Tribunal:
this is a meat processing company we’re talking about. Its business is killing
livestock and selling meat, thereby creating jobs and prosperity. Ordering it
to provide human rights courses because one man’s religious rights were
supposedly breached might provide officious tribunals with a thrilling sense of
power, but it’s an expensive distraction from what Affco needs to be doing.

Running a large, complex business and
keeping people employed, especially during a global economic crisis (this happened
in 2010), is demanding enough.

Doing it knowing that your actions may be
later be judged by a lofty panel of second-guessers, eager to wag their fingers
in your face and hold you to account for not giving due weight to the Human
Rights Act, must make it damned near impossible.

Then there’s the separate issue of the
penalty imposed: $12,118 for loss of wages and a staggering $15,000 for
“humiliation”. For heaven’s sake – the man was employed as a casual and worked
there for only a few days. The damages award can only be seen as punitive: an
attempt to make an example of Affco for not showing sufficient religious
sensitivity.

The plaintiff initially sought $2000 in
damages for humiliation. Perhaps he got a whiff of the way things were going at
the hearing, because he subsequently revised his claim (humbly and modestly, no doubt) to $15,000, which was
granted in full.

Naturally the tribunal was able to cite a
vast body of statute law and judicial precedent as support for its finding.
That’s part of the problem. People running businesses are governed by a
constantly proliferating thicket of employment and human rights law that most
of them are unaware of, but which can trip them up at any time.

Obviously we need employment laws to
protect workers from exploitative and unscrupulous bosses. It’s a matter of
striking a fair and realistic balance between the rights of employees and the right
of employers to conduct their business efficiently and profitably – thus
providing jobs and keeping the economy ticking over – without being unreasonably
obstructed or punished for not measuring up to some arbitrary notion of human
rights.

Judging by this tribunal’s decision, we
haven’t got the balance right.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Think about it.
They’re shutting down the factories that produce the Holden and the Ford Falcon
– cars that, for generations, have helped define what it meant to be
Australian.

The Holden and the
Falcon are Australia on wheels, but the country’s guilty secret was that the
two automotive brands were able to survive only with massive taxpayer handouts.
Economically speaking, they were crocks.

Australian
governments spent an estimated $30 billion over the past 16 years propping up
the car industry and the workforce it employed. Now Tony Abbott’s government
has decided the subsidies must end – a bold move, given the Holden’s sacred
status in Australian culture.

It’s worth
pointing out that New Zealand went through this painful process more than two
decades ago, when our politicians realised it made more sense for cars to be
built in their country of origin.

The phasing out of
protection for the domestic vehicle industry is one reason why a new car in New
Zealand now costs the equivalent of 30 weeks’ salary rather than 90 weeks’, as
was the case in the 1980s.

In this, we were
ahead of the Australians – but then we often are, though the average Aussie
would sooner undergo multiple limb amputations than admit it.

Arguably even more
traumatic for patriotic Australians than the collapse of the car industry is
the crisis engulfing Qantas – Australia’s best-known brand internationally, and
hence an even more potent nationalist symbol than the Holden.

Last week, on the
same day as Air New Zealand celebrated a record half-year profit, Qantas was
announcing a $271 million first-half loss and the shedding of 5000 jobs.

This was
accompanied by renewed wailing from Qantas about the unfairness of competition.
It seems the first instinct of the Australian carrier when it’s in trouble is
to run to Mummy government complaining that the playing field isn’t even.

Australians are
famous for their swaggering self-confidence, but you have to wonder whether,
underneath that tough veneer, they are actually fearful and insecure. Just look
at how they fought to keep New Zealand apples out of the Australian market on
spurious pretexts, and how they recently stripped New Zealand products from
their supermarket shelves.

Perhaps reality is
starting to bite for the Lucky Country. The mining boom helped insulate Australians
against the global financial crisis and may have convinced them they were
invincible – a view to which the typical Ocker is highly susceptible.

Don’t you feel
sorry for them? No, I don’t either.

* * *

WATCHING the
rebirth of ACT, and in particular the performance of its new leader Jamie
Whyte, is like watching a high-wire artist crossing the Niagara Falls.

Mr Whyte is an
intelligent man who, unlike the impostor John Banks, believes in ACT’s original
credo and promises to take the party back to its ideological roots.

His big problem is
that he seems honest. Once journalists latched on to this novelty, they realised
there was some sport to be had.

A question about
incest, which Mr Whyte answered with the ingenuousness of a political novice,
was quickly followed by one about polygamy. Result: a media furore.

As long as he
responds to questions like a philosophy lecturer (his previous calling) rather
than a politician, the media will continue trying to trap him into saying
outrageous things which can then be used to ridicule him. It doesn’t help that
these are philosophical positions that can’t easily be explained in a sound
bite.

Whether this will
harm him politically is another matter. It’s possible the commentariat was more
excited by his statements than the public, which very likely recognised it was
Whyte the pointy-headed philosopher speaking.

To get back to the
high-wire analogy, Mr Whyte has managed to stay upright so far. But each curly
question is like a gust of wind that causes him to teeter precariously before
regaining his balance.

Will he make it
safely to the other side, or will he topple into the torrent below? Either way,
ACT’s true believers may be in for a few more heart-stopping moments.

* * *

NEW ZEALANDERS
drink to get drunk, declares the ever-censorious Ross Bell of the New Zealand
Drug Foundation. “One of the ways Kiwis drink is we drink to get drunk,” he
told the Dominion Post this week.
“People plan their whole weekend around it – what’s the next drinking occasion
and how much can I drink.”

Really? This
doesn’t describe any New Zealander I know. Mr Bell’s description may apply to a
small and troublesome minority of binge drinkers, but he didn’t differentiate.
According to him, we’re all hopeless inebriates.

As long as the
wowser lobby resorts to ridiculous hyperbole in an attempt to whip up hysteria
over alcohol, it forfeits the right to be taken seriously.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.